This watchdog blog, by journalist Norman Oder, offers analysis, commentary, and reportage about the $4.9 billion project to build the Barclays Center arena and 16 high-rise buildings at a crucial site in Brooklyn. Dubbed Atlantic Yards by developer Forest City Ratner in 2003, it was rebranded Pacific Park Brooklyn in 2014 after the Chinese government-owned Greenland Group bought a 70% stake in 15 towers. New York State still calls it Atlantic Yards. Note: archive at right.

Richard Lipsky and the "booty capitalists" of the AY CBA

Credit Richard Lipsky, lobbyist around town against big box stores (yet for Atlantic Yards and other Forest City Ratner projects) for introducing the term "booty capitalists" to the local discussion. Actually, he's used the term regarding Wal-Mart's potential move to Brooklyn, but it's equally apt regarding Atlantic Yards.

As Lipsky has written in his Neighborhood Retail Alliance blog:We have referred to the potential Wal-Mart partners in this effort as "booty capitalists" and although the term was coined by Karl Marx its modern application refers to some opportunists, especially in the African-American community, who, while having few economic resources of their own, will use their political positions and a company's vulnerabilities to their own personal advantage.

(So "booty" is being used to refer to "treasure," rather than the more slangy you-know-what.)

The CBA

To watchers of the Atlantic Yards project, especially its controversial Community Benefits Agreement (CBA), "booty capitalists" sounds like a description of the several CBA signatories who enthusiastically testified at the public hearing last Wednesday without acknowledging they had received financial support from the developer.

Lipsky wrote:In the process the booty capitalists will undoubtedly evoke terms like economic empowerment to create an effective symbolic cover for their own aggrandizement. It will also not be surprising if we find out, after the fact, that the development effort cost a great deal more than it should have under normal market conditions.This is exactly what happened in the original NYC case of booty capitalism: the building of a Pathmark Supercenter in East Harlem...What happened in East Harlem was that Pathmark hooked up with Rev. Calvin Butts and the Abyssinian Development Corporation (ADC). The supermarket development was then transformed into a community empowerment project and the mostly Hispanic independent supermarket owners were effectively pitted against “The Community.” As a result, the development was also larded up with subsidies from the federal government, low interest loans from the city and a grant from the Local Initiatives Service Corporation (LISC), a spin-off of the Ford Foundation.

For "the mostly Hispanic independent supermarket owners," substitute "many residents of the neighborhoods near the proposed AY site," and the analogy becomes somewhat more direct.

Connecting the dots

In another piece, headlined Watch For the Booty Capitalists, Lipsky even began to connect the dots:Our own point-of-view is that Wal-Mart’s best opportunity is to find a site in and around a low-income community of color and, once designated, hook up with a community group and, a la Ratner, incentivize the relationship with a lucrative community benefits agreement.

Will he criticize Ratner's CBA? Nope. In fact, he called it "a historic first" and contrasted it with that regarding the Bronx Terminal Market:Now that the ULURP process has begun Related and the Bronx BP have set up a hand-picked group to craft a community benefits agreement. What Ratner and company took over two years to negotiate...

Unmentioned is that, unlike with the pioneering CBAs negotiated in Los Angeles, the Atlantic Yards CBA was negotiated with groups that all supported the project.

Lipsky likes the Atlantic Yards project, with some vague points about housing (who's paying for it?) and jobs (exactly how many?):There are a number of legitimate reasons to oppose the development, foremost among them is the use of eminent domain to oust long time homeowners. There are, however, even more compelling reasons to support the project, a development that will create 7,000 units of housing and thousands of part time and full time jobs.

And above all, Lipsky touts the value of basketball, as he's done before.

Lipsky's blind spot

Will Lipsky point out that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Vanderbilt Yard should have been put out to bid, as he argued should be the case for the agency's Hudson Yard in Manhattan? No.

He can go only so far. As Lipsky acknowledged in June:We do have a point-of-view but our pro union stance is usually restricted to the box store issue, since our main focus is on defending neighborhood stores. Our goal is definitely to advance certain issues but we like to inform as many as possible on the various sides of any policy debate. Sometimes this wish is limited, as some readers never fail to point out, by the fact that we are in business to defend our clients' interests.(Emphasis added)

Lipsky on AKRF

So we shouldn't expect criticism of "booty capitalists" at the Atlantic Yards project, just as we should not expect criticism of consultants AKRF, which worked on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the Empire State Development Corporation.

As noted, Lipsky has written, regarding another environmental review process: The AKRF folks are simply rationalizing their job which is to make a great deal of money by minimizing impacts and conducting dishonest research. In another post, Lipsky deemed AKRF accommodating consultants" and "trained in the abject aping of its master’s whims.

At the end of the day

Lipsky, according to an 11/14/05 profile in the New York Observer, is getting paid by Ratner to organize an amateur sports league at the proposed Brooklyn arena and to do other lobbying for the developer's projects. Lipsky generally opposes projects that require eminent domain, but told the Observer, "If it was bringing in big-box stores or displacing other retailers, we might have different feelings."

While that's part of the lawsuit, more prominent are claims of racial discrimination and retaliation, with black employees claiming repeated abuse by white supervisors, preferential treatment toward Hispanic colleagues, and retaliation in response to complaints.

Two individual supervisors, for example, are charged with referring to black employees as “black motherfucker,” “dumb black bitch,” “black monkey,” “piece of shit” and “nigger.”

Two have referred to an employee blind in one eye as “cyclops,” and “the one-eyed guy,” and an employee with a nose disorder as “the nose guy.”

There's been no official response yet though arena spokesman Barry Baum told the Daily News they, but take “allegations of this kind very seriously” and have "a zero tolerance policy for…

To supporters of Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards project, it's a long-awaited plan for long-overlooked land. "The Atlantic Yards area has been available for any developer in America for over 100 years,” declared Borough President Marty Markowitz at a 5/26/05 City Council hearing.

Charles Gargano, chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation, mused on 11/15/05 to WNYC's Brian Lehrer, “Isn’t it interesting that these railyards have sat for decades and decades and decades, and no one has done a thing about them.” Forest City Ratner spokesman Joe DePlasco, in a 12/19/04 New York Times article ("In a War of Words, One Has the Power to Wound") described the railyards as "an empty scar dividing the community."

But why exactly has the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Vanderbilt Yard never been developed? Do public officials have some responsibility?

At right is a photo of a poster spotted in Hasidic Williamsburg right. Clearly there's an event scheduled at the Barclays Center aimed at the Haredi Jewish community (strict Orthodox Jews who reject secular culture), but the lack of English text makes it cryptic.

The website Matzav.com explains, Protest Against Israeli Draft of Bnei Yeshiva Rescheduled for Barclays Center:
A large asifa to protest the drafting of bnei yeshiva in Eretz Yisroel into the Israeli army that had been set to take place this month will instead be held on Sunday, 17 Sivan/June 11, at the Barclays Center in Downtown Brooklyn, NY.
So attendees at a big gathering will protest an apparent change of policy that will make it much more difficult for traditional Orthodox Jewish students--both Hasidic (who follow a rebbe) and non-Hasidic (who don't)--to get deferments from the draft. Comments on the Yeshiva World website explain some of the debate.

First mentioned in April, the Atlantic Yards project in Atlanta is moving ahead--and has the potential to nudge Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn further down in Google searches.

According to a 5/30/17 press release, Hines and Invesco Real Estate Announce T3 West Midtown and Atlantic Yards:
Hines, the international real estate firm, and Invesco Real Estate, a global real estate investment manager, today announced a joint venture on behalf of one of Invesco Real Estate’s institutional clients to develop two progressive office projects in Atlanta totalling 700,000 square feet. T3 West Midtown will be a 200,000-square-foot heavy timber office development and Atlantic Yards will consist of 500,000 square feet of progressive office space in two buildings. Both projects are located on sites within Atlantic Station in the flourishing Midtown submarket.
Hines will work with Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture (HPA) as the design architect for both T3 West Midtown and Atlantic Yards. DLR Group will be t…

Pacific Park Brooklyn is seriously delayed, Forest City Realty Trust said yesterday in a news release, which further acknowledged that the project has caused a $300 million impairment, or write-down of the asset, as the expected revenues no longer exceed the carrying cost.

The Cleveland-based developer, parent of Brooklyn-based Forest City Ratner, which is a 30% investor in Pacific Park along with 70% partner/overseer Greenland USA, blamed the "significant impairment" on an oversupply of market-rate apartments, the uncertain fate of the 421-a tax break, and a continued increase in construction costs.

While the delay essentially confirms the obvious, given that two major buildings have not launched despite plans to do so, it raises significant questions about the future of the project, including:if market-rate construction is delayed, will the affordable h…

Real Estate Weekly, reporting on trends in Chinese investment in New York City, on 11/18/15 quoted Jim Costello, a senior vice president at research firm Real Capital Analytics:
“They’re typically building high-end condos, build it and sell it. Capital return is in a few years. That’s something that is ingrained in the companies that have been coming here because that’s how they’ve grown in the last 35 years. It’s always been a development game for them. So they’re just repeating their business model here,” he said.
When I read that last November, I didn't think it necessarily applied to Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, now 70% owned (outside of the Barclays Center and B2 modular apartment tower), by the Greenland Group, owned significantly by the Shanghai government.
A majority of the buildings will be rentals, some 100% market, some 100% affordable, and several--the last several built--are supposed to be 50% market/50% subsidized. (See tentative timetable below.)Selling development …

Click on graphic to enlarge. This is post-dated to stay at the top of the blog. It will be updated as announced configurations change and buildings launch. The August 2014 tentative configurations proposed by developer Greenland Forest City Partners will change, and the project is already well behind that tentative timetable.